


with strange aeons

by peradi



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Cthulhu Mythos, Eldritch Horrors, F/M, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt's Canonically Giant Cock, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Plays fast and loose with canon, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:36:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: Fucking and music: the twin triumphs of humans. Oh, both existed before humanity, but humanity refined them. A sparrow sings in a tree. A dog fucks in the dirt. But a human -- a human -- they sing of their lost love over the sea, in a sweet voice wrenched with pain; they make love beneath the stars, contemplating their brief existence. They ascribe meaning to every little thing. It’s glorious. Hypnotic. They have such brief lives but by all that ever was, they make them count.--Jaskier is an eldritch horror from the dawn of creation who is absolutely in love with humanity. Geralt is none the wiser.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 40
Kudos: 326





	with strange aeons

**Author's Note:**

> basically 'wonderterror' but in the witcher-verse. 
> 
> the sex comes in later chapters, fret not.

_I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams._

_-_ **H.P Lovecraft.**

“I was born  _ starving _ ,” says Jaskier. “Gods. I was so  _ hungry _ .”

The pretty girl in his bed -- Hilde -- has lovely eyes, bright blue, beneath pale brows. Humans are just  _ so _ gorgeous. Jaskier can’t get over it. Every single one of them, continuing multitudes of possibilities, dreams and thoughts beyond counting. Little universes. 

Jaskier is  _ very _ drunk.

Fortunately, so is Hilde. Alcohol is a wondrous thing, loosening all sorts of shackles; in Hilde’s case, it only took her half a glass of wine before declaring,  _ oh my goodness, my husband is so far away _ . _ You should keep my bed warm, pretty little bard.  _

“Everyone’s born hungry, aren’t they?” she slurs. “All hungry for -- for possibility.”

Oh, he likes her  _ so  _ much. He tucks one arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer. The air smells of perfume and sex, and the candles have burned low. Jaskier has been around a long, long time, but he hopes that the thrill of fucking a lord’s pretty wife in the lord’s own comfortable bed never goes away. 

“Well, yes,” he says. “It was an unfortunate state of affairs, really. It was a good few millennia before anything edible was considerate enough to evolve. I just had to chew on my siblings for a bit, there in the void. Well.  _ In _ is probably the wrong way of putting it. I  _ was _ the void. And from it. Does that make sense?”

Hilde’s brow furrows. “No,” she says. “Not even a little bit.”

“It’s hard to explain in any human tongue,” says Jaskier, lounging back against the headboard. “See, your languages are tailored for discussing three dimensions, and you don’t really have an easy way to discuss time that isn’t in a linear fashion.”

“Um,” says Hilde. She leans over him to help herself to more wine. He’s going to write a verse about her breasts, as soon as he works out a good rhyme for ‘divine golden orbs’.

“I discovered life eventually. Not  _ sentient _ life, you understand. I was a little less hungry after that. There are a limitless supply of worlds, you see.” He licks his lips at the memory. “No matter how many you devour, there are always _ more. _ ”

“So you, what -- ate worlds?”

“Ate the things  _ on _ worlds. Most worlds are rock and magma, my sweetling, and  _ that _ is not a good meal. You want things that  _ live _ .”

The line between Hilde’s pale brows has deepened. She’s thoroughly confused. Jaskier kisses her forehead, tenderly. 

“You’re  _ weird _ ,” she says. 

“I  _ am _ ,” Jaskier says. “I’m sorry. I’m just rambling about my childhood . Gods, what a bore I am.”

He brushes his nose against her hair, inhaling deeply, and lets his lips touch hers. Her mouth is soft, and sweet, and as he rolls her beneath him she squeals with laughter. 

_ Humans _ . So delightful.

  


\--

  


Fucking and music: the twin triumphs of humans. Oh, both existed before humanity, but humanity  _ refined _ them. A sparrow sings in a tree. A dog fucks in the dirt. But a human -- a  _ human --  _ they sing of their lost love over the sea, in a sweet voice wrenched with pain; they make love beneath the stars, contemplating their brief existence. They ascribe meaning to every little thing. It’s glorious. Hypnotic. They have such brief lives but by all that ever was, they make them  _ count _ .

(And oh yes, Jaskier knows that dwarves and elves sing as well. And fuck. But he just doesn’t  _ like _ them in the same way: they live too long, for one. More pressingly: they have an annoying tendency to work out who he really is.  _ What _ he really is.)

(Humans are  _ so _ blind to the world around them. Most creatures find it vexing. Jaskier is just glad that most humans -- unlike, say, elves -- don’t start bleeding from the eyes and the ears the instant he opens his mouth).

  


\--

  


“I  _ do _ have siblings,” says Jaskier. He’s sober this time, treading carefully around the truth. His companion is a charming squire named Finnian -- last name unknown -- who has the most marvellous eyes, dark and lively. He took the lad in one of the cleaner stables, and the air smells of hay and horse. Next door, a knight’s mount chews her dinner. 

(It took him a long,  _ long _ time to work out how to have a human form that animals did not immediately see through. He’s more or less got the hang of it now, though dogs always know.  _ Always _ . It’s not that they dislike him for it; just that they sniff his feet and sneeze, or whine, and eye him with an expression that clearly says:  _ you are not a human, but you may be a Good Boy, so I shall reserve judgement _ .)

(Cats probably know as well. They always try and scratch him. Though that could be because they are evil little bastards, regardless of one’s heritage.)

Finnian blinks up at him. He’s nestled against Jaskier’s shoulder, bare-chested in the lazy summer sun. Motes of dust spangle around his head. Sweat glosses his torso from their earlier exertions. “Do you like them?”

“--yes,” Jaskier says, at length, which is true. His siblings never really  _ understood _ him, but to dislike them would be like disliking the sun for shining so warmly. They cannot help what they are. “But we have not talked in -- some time.”

“I have three sisters. Trueborn. I’m the bastard. They’re kind to me, but I know that their mother dislikes me; Father has been speaking of my inheritance for some time now, and she would rather I get nothing.”

Jaskier soothes his hand over the boy’s tight curls. Human law of inheritance is  _ so _ bizarre. As is their gender. He doesn’t really  _ understand _ gender.

“When was the last time you spoke to your family?”

_ Family _ . What an odd word for it. Jaskier doesn’t think of his siblings as his family. They birthed him, and he birthed them, and they occupied the ancestral void together, hunting and hungering as one, sometimes separating into different beings, sometimes choosing to blur their forms together. Becoming human -- or, at least, squashing his form into a human shell of his own devising -- was the ultimate act of severance. He had to build walls between himself and the void, drawing up barriers that had never existed before, separating  _ them _ from  _ him _ ; making them  _ siblings _ , not simply others-like-me.

“Oh, about fifteen hundred years ago,” he says; offhandedly truthful, in the way he tends to be when his emotions tiptoe towards the despondent. 

Finnian snorts laughter. “You’re telling me that you’ve not spoken to your family since the Conjunction of the Spheres?”

Ah yes. That’s what the mortals call it.

“In _ deed _ , pretty thing,” he says, “that’s exactly it. Indeed, I think last time I spoke to them we had an argument so cataclysmic that we  _ caused _ the Conjunction.”

Finnian, who thinks he is joking, laughs again, glorious and bright. Jaskier, who knows he is not, swallows down his vague feeling of guilt. 

  


\--

  


The argument in question started thusly:

_ You can’t eat that world.  _

_ Why not? _

_ Because I’m watching it.  _

_ What do you mean? _

And Jaskier -- at least, the eldritch horror that was shortly to be known as Jaskier -- had to explain the notion of  _ watching _ , which was a challenge, as he did not rally understand it himself.  _ Watching _ was not  _ waiting for a planet to develop life so it could eat something more substantial.  _ It was not  _ examining my siblings for signs of weakness so that I can maybe devour them _ . It was simply an act, driven by curiosity. Curiosity  _ itself _ was a concept that was new to Jaskier. The urge to watch without eating, just to see what happened. 

He tried to relay this to his sibling. 

_ You mean, you’re waiting for there to be more of them? _

_ No! No, absolutely not -- _

Frustration is a new emotion as well. 

Anyway, the sibling tried to barge past Jaskier to get at the world, and Jaskier fought back, lashing out with tentacles and teeth and claws, ripping into its shadowskin. Other siblings joined the fray, and in the fighting -- well, a reality or two may have been torn. Jaskier had been terribly wounded, and gathered himself together, fleeing not further into the void, where hungering maws waited, but down into the world beneath, where no sibling would follow.

He was  _ tired _ of existing the way he had done. He decided that he wished to be human, and experience that for a change. In very short order, however, he discovered that his kind are not meant to  _ create _ . They are meant to  _ eat _ . 

To help him with his quest to create a functioning body, he decided a little bit of study was in order. He caught himself a human. It was very easy. The poor species had just stumbled into this strange new world, and didn’t know up from down. 

The boy had blue eyes. Had, but not for long. Jaskier had thought,  _ oh, look, a neat way to enter this body _ , and pushed in through the wet membrane, and destroyed the eyes in the process. They had melted down the poor lad’s cheeks, followed swiftly by the rest of his skin. 

Jaskier, in very short order, learned what pain was (he had never felt it before); what horror was; what despair was; and, most terribly of all, he learned  _ love _ . For as the boy died, his scrambled  _ agonised _ thoughts turned to his lover, and how he had given her a bundle of flowers from this strange new world; dandelions, bright yellow, gathered from a meadow. Those flowers were the last things he thought of before collapsing in a heap of smouldering flesh. 

In that moment, Jaskier realised that his curiosity about humanity -- his fascination -- had been as distant and cynical as his siblings hunger for them. He had not cared about humans, not really. He had watched them in their little worlds, watched them scurry and fornicate and sing, and he thought they were  _ fun _ but he had not  _ understood _ them. 

And now he did. And it  _ hurt _ . 

  


\--

  


“Oh, it happens to everyone sometimes,” Jaskier says sunnily, looking down at his own flaccid cock with a smile far broader than most men would have in such a situation. “There are other things I can do for you, my dear.”

There were indeed. Jaskier made use of his tongue and fingers until handsome Freya, knight of the realm, is gasping his name, gripping his hair, and all but weeping with pleasure. Afterwards, Jaskier wipes his lips on his sleeve and snuggles up to her.

He may never see her again after this, but he likes to cuddle. 

“I wonder what we’d look like, if we could choose our own appearances,” she says, after a few warm heartbeats of contented post-coital lounging. 

Jaskier blinks. “That’s an interesting thought.”

“I -- I know it’s a weird thing to say,” she says, blushing. “But -- well, if I could have chosen a few years ago, when I was still a maid, I would have wanted to be shorter. More -- feminine.”

Jaskier blinks again.  _ Humans.  _ They are truly bizarre. “Why?”

“Well -- the same reason that you’d probably want a cock that always works.” She flushes harder when she says that. “Bugger. I didn’t mean that --”

“No. It’s fine. I’m not offended.”

“Well, it would be more convenient, wouldn’t it? To have a cock that always got hard; to have -- I don’t know -- gorgeous blonde hair.”

She touches her own mop of brown curls. 

“Don’t be foolish, my lady,” Jaskier says, kissing the hand resting on his shoulder. “Human bodies are  _ fantastic _ . They’re fantastic  _ because _ they don’t always quite work the way you want. If you weren’t so tall and strong then you would not be a knight. If my cock always worked then -- well. It wouldn’t be a proper human cock, and that is what matters, after all.”

If she thinks there’s something odd about the way he says  _ human _ , she doesn’t mention it. 

  


\--

  


It takes him  _ centuries _ to get the hang of a human body. He takes the poor, dead lad’s corpse -- peels it off the road -- and sets about work, tweaking this and that. He carries the boy’s emotions inside him, holds them close to his heart (that is: the closest to a heart one can get, when one is an ageless void monster) and treasures them. 

(He remembers the dandelion most of all.  _ Jaskier _ means dandelion, in the tongue of the lad’s people, and so that is what he calls himself. A way to honour, and to remember.)

His early attempts go a little like this:  _ right, heart beating, yes good; okay, can I take a step -- wait, are bones meant to show like that? They need marrow to work? Oh shit, dead again _ . 

Human bodies are just so  _ bizarre _ . And his kind are meant to eat, not create; destroy, not birth. But he  _ isn’t _ one of them, not anymore. He stopped being one of them when he stood before a world swarming with life and said,  _ no, I am watching _ . He stopped being one of them when he killed a boy and felt his pain. 

He is  _ ancient _ . But he is also something very  _ very _ new. 

  


\--

“Abort  _ yourself _ ,” shouts one of the patrons, and lobs a bit of bread at him. It clatters off his shoulder, onto the floor. Jaskier drops to his knees to scoop it up. 

Music and fucking. Humanity’s two triumphs. He’s managed one. The second is taking a little while longer than he hoped. The  _ tune _ comes fairly easily -- that is, it only took him about fifty or so years to learn to play the lute. 

( _ Humans _ naturally have an ear for melody; what sounds right, and what does not. Jaskier does  _ not _ . He has to  _ learn _ .)

“I’m glad I could bring you all together!” he shouts, gathering up more of the bread pelted at him. Dinner tonight. He’s died thousands and thousands of times, and starvation is definitely his least favourite way to go. 

(Of course, he could make himself a body that does not need to eat. Just like he could make a cock that always works. But that’s not the  _ point _ .)

There’s only one man not offering an opinion, sitting silently in the corner, staring at his ale like it murdered his entire family.

Jaskier smells the witcher from where he stands. Destiny. Death. Onions. And he has an idea. 

  


\--

  


A  _ long _ time ago, a burly woman with black hair, black eyes and corpse-white skin tried to kill him. Jaskier, more often than not, allows himself to be killed; it’s easy enough to resurrect himself, pulling together his atoms, fixing up his body. But there’s something about this woman he doesn’t like. It’s the way she  _ laughs _ when he cries out in pain. 

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he says, holding the wound on his side shut. Blood spills out over his hand, spattering onto the snowy ground; above them, the sky is a grey shroud. His eyes are wide and wild with fear. “Please, I’m just a bard --”

“You’re a  _ monster _ . I can see it. I can  _ smell  _ it.”

_ That _ has his hackles up. He’s been called all sorts of things -- whore, cad, bastard, bad musician -- but  _ monster _ ? 

“Oh,” he says, frostily. “Can you?”

“I’m a witcher,” she says. “I kill monsters. It’s what I  _ do _ .”

“Were the little sylvans monsters?”

“The sylvans?” She frowns, then remembers. “Oh -- the little mutants killing sheep.”

“They were  _ starving _ ,” says Javier, taking a step forwards. He’d given them a decent burial, digging into the iron-hard ground with his bare hands.

“The farmers will starve without their sheep,” says the witcher, with a shrug. 

“No. They would lose a few coins at market. The sylvans were  _ children _ .” Jaskier shows his teeth in a snarl.

The witcher rolls her eyes, and goes to pull out her sword --

And her hand falls with a dull, meaty  _ thud _ . She stares at her stump, pulsing red; then her dark, astonished eyes lift to Jaskier. 

Jaskier who is  _ crawling out of his human skin _ . The form of a bard hangs in the air, slack, like a marionette, but from its back erupts a cacophony of swirling blackness: teeth, talons, tentacles, and wings. A formless wilderness of a creature, with a thousand shining eyes, and gaping mouths that open up into the void of stars. 

The witcher quivers, her mouth hanging open on a silent scream, as blood starts to drizzle from her eyes and nose. 

“They were  _ children _ ,” Jaskier screams, with fifteen throats, the words layered and  _ buzzing _ . 

The witcher’s head explodes in a shower of red mist. 

He pulls himself back into his human body and coughs, wriggling his shoulders. “I wish you hadn’t made me do that,” he tells the witcher’s headless corpse. “It always feels  _ weird _ after I do that. Like wearing shoes that are too small.”

He picks up a fragment of skull from the snow, pops it in his mouth and chews on it as he rummages through the witcher’s mangled flesh. His hands split open, tongues of blackness working out from under his fingernails; scavenging, examining.  _ Learning _ . 

The next time he meets a witcher, they’re not going to know who he is at first sniff.

  


\--

  


Lyrics. Lyrics are always the problem, because there’s only so much you can learn about the human experience by watching. The only way to learn -- to  _ truly _ learn -- is to live it. 

“Come here,” says Geralt, and then punches him in the stomach. Jaskier convulses, coughing and choking, but -- secretly -- smiling. Yes. He smells the touch of destiny on this one. And the  _ goodness _ . The goodness, pure and clean as crystal water. 

He is going to learn a  _ lot _ from Geralt the Witcher. 


End file.
